The Combined Effect of Political Skill and Political Decision Making on Job Satisfaction1

The current study examined the interactive effects of an environment high in political decision making and political skill on job satisfaction. We predicted that as perceptions of political decision making increase, the satisfaction of individuals low in political skill would decrease. Conversely, the negative effects of political decision making on job satisfaction would be minimized among individuals high in political skill. Data were gathered from 105 managerial employees of a financial‐services organization. Results provided strong support for the hypothesized political decision‐making/political‐skill relationship. Implications, strengths and limitations, and avenues for future research are discussed.     

Developmental trajectories of childhood disruptive behaviors and adolescent delinquency: a six-site,cross-national study

This study used data from 6 sites and 3 countries to examine the developmental course of physical aggression in childhood and to analyze its linkage to violent and nonviolent offending outcomes in adolescence. The results indicate that among boys there is continuity in problem behavior from childhood to adolescence and that such continuity is especially acute when early problem behavior takes the form of physical aggression. Chronic physical aggression during the elementary school years specifically increases the risk for continued physical violence as well as other nonviolent forms of delinquency during adolescence. However, this conclusion is reserved primarily for boys, because the results indicate no clear linkage between childhood physical aggression and adolescent offending among female samples despite notable similarities across male and female samples in the developmental course of physical aggression in childhood.     

The Effect of Perfectionism and Acculturative Stress on Levels of Depression Experienced by East Asian International Students

This study examined relationships among acculturative stress, grade point average satisfaction, maladaptive perfectionism, and depression in 52 East Asian international students and 126 North American students. Results indicated that a combined effect of perfectionism and acculturative stress accounted for more than 30% of the variance related to depression. Implications include the importance of attending to perfectionism and acculturative stress for improving the overall well‐being of East Asian international students. Este estudio examinó las relaciones entre el estrés aculturativo, la satisfacción con el promedio de calificaciones, el perfeccionismo inadaptado y la depresión en 52 estudiantes internacionales del este asiático y 126 estudiantes norteamericanos. Los resultados indicaron que el efecto combinado del perfeccionismo y el estrés aculturativo representó más del 30% de la varianza relacionada con la depresión. Las implicaciones incluyen la importancia de prestar atención a los niveles de perfeccionismo y estrés aculturativo para mejorar el bienestar general de los estudiantes internacionales del este asiático.     

Meta-analytic evidence for a superordinate cognitive control network subserving diverse executive functions

Classic cognitive theory conceptualizes executive functions as involving multiple specific domains, including initiation, inhibition, working memory, flexibility, planning, and vigilance. Lesion and neuroimaging experiments over the past two decades have suggested that both common and unique processes contribute to executive functions during higher cognition. It has been suggested that a superordinate fronto–cingulo–parietal network supporting cognitive control may also underlie a range of distinct executive functions. To test this hypothesis in the largest sample to date, we used quantitative meta-analytic methods to analyze 193 functional neuroimaging studies of 2,832 healthy individuals, ages 18–60, in which performance on executive function measures was contrasted with an active control condition. A common pattern of activation was observed in the prefrontal, dorsal anterior cingulate, and parietal cortices across executive function domains, supporting the idea that executive functions are supported by a superordinate cognitive control network. However, domain-specific analyses showed some variation in the recruitment of anterior prefrontal cortex, anterior and midcingulate regions, and unique subcortical regions such as the basal ganglia and cerebellum. These results are consistent with the existence of a superordinate cognitive control network in the brain, involving dorsolateral prefrontal, anterior cingulate, and parietal cortices, that supports a broad range of executive functions.     

Strategies in sentential reasoning

Four experiments examined the strategies that individuals develop in sentential reasoning. They led to the discovery of five different strategies. According to the theory proposed in the paper, each of the strategies depends on component tactics, which all normal adults possess, and which are based on mental models. Reasoners vary their use of tactics in ways that have no deterministic account. This variation leads different individuals to assemble different strategies, which include the construction of incremental diagrams corresponding to mental models, and the pursuit of the consequences of a single model step by step. Moreover, the difficulty of a problem (i.e., the number of mental models required by the premises) predisposes reasoners towards certain strategies. Likewise, the sentential connectives in the premises also bias reasoners towards certain strategies, e.g., conditional premises tend to elicit reasoning step by step whereas disjunctive premises tend to elicit incremental diagrams.